Alexander laughed. They came down to the water and the stepping-stones before White Farm. The house faced them, long and low, white among trees from which the leaves were falling. Alexander and Ian crossed upon the stones, and beyond the fringing hazels the dogs came to meet them.
Jarvis Barrow had all the appearance of a figure from that Old Testament in which he was learned. He might have been a prophet's right-hand man, he might have been the prophet himself. He stood, at sixty-five, lean and strong, gray-haired, but with decrepitude far away. Elder of the kirk, sternly religious, able at his own affairs, he read his Bible and prospered in his earthly living. Now he listened to the laird's message, nodding his head, but saying little. His staff was in his hand; he was on his way to kirk session; tell the laird that the account was correct. He stood without his door as though he waited for the youths to give good day and depart. Alexander had made a movement in this direction when from beyond Jarvis Barrow came a woman's voice. It belonged to Jenny Barrow, the farmer's unmarried daughter, who kept house for him.
"Father, do you gae on, and let the young gentlemen bide a wee and rest their banes and tell a puir woman wha never gaes onywhere the news!"
"Then do ye sit awhile, laddies, with the womenfolk," said Jarvis Barrow. "But give me pardon if I go, for I canna keep the kirk waiting."
He was gone, staff and gray plaid and a collie with him. Jenny, his daughter, appeared in the door.
"Come in, Mr. Alexander, and you, too, sir, and have a crack with us! We're in the dairy-room, Elspeth and Gilian and me."
She was a woman of forty, raw-boned but not unhandsome, good-natured, capable, too, but with more heart than head. It was a saying with her that she had brains enough for kirk on the Sabbath and a warm house the week round. Everybody knew Jenny Barrow and liked well enough bread of her baking.
The room to which she led Ian and Alexander had its floor level with the turf without the open door. The sun flooded it. There came from within the sound, up and down, of a churn, and a voice singing:
"O laddie, will ye gie to me
A ribbon for my fairing?"
CHAPTER VI
It grew that Ian was telling stories of cities—of London and of Paris, for he had been there, and of Rome, for he had been there. He had seen kings and queens, he had seen the Pope—
"Lord save us!" ejaculated Jenny Barrow.
He leaned against the dairy wall and the sun fell over him, and he looked something finer and more golden than often came that way. Young Gilian at the churn stood with parted lips, the long dasher still in her hands. This was as good as stories of elves, pixies, fays, men of peace and all! Elspeth let the milk-pans be and sat beside them on the long bench, and, with hands folded in her lap, looked with brown eyes many a league away. Neither Elspeth nor Gilian was without book learning. Behind them and before them were long visits to scholar kindred in a city in the north and fit schooling there. London and Paris and Rome. … Foreign lands and the great world. And this was a glittering young eagle that had sailed and seen!
Alexander gazed with delight upon Ian spreading triumphant wings. This was his friend. There was nothing finer than continuously to come upon praiseworthiness in your friend!
"And a beautiful lady came by who was the king's favorite—"
"Gude guide us! The limmer!"
"And she was walking on rose-colored velvet and her slippers had diamonds worked in them. Snow was on the ground outside and poor folk were freezing, but she carried over each arm a garland of roses as though it were June—"
Jenny Barrow raised her hands. "She'll sit yet in the cauld blast, in the sinner's shift!"
"And after a time there walked in the king, and the courtiers behind him like the tail of a peacock—"
They had a happy hour in the White Farm dairy. At last Jenny and the girls set for the two cold meat and bannocks and ale. And still at table Ian was the shining one. The sun was at noon and so was his mood.
"You're fey!" said Alexander, at last.
"Na, na!" spoke Jenny. "But, oh, he's the bonny lad!"
The dinner was eaten. It was time to be going.
"Shut your book of stories!" said Alexander. "We're for the Kelpie's Pool, and that's not just a step from here!"
Elspeth raised her brown eyes. "Why will you go to the Kelpie's Pool? That's a drear water!"
"I want to show it to him. He's never seen it."
"It's drear!" said Elspeth. "A drear, wanrestfu' place!"
But Ian and Alexander must go. The aunt and nieces accompanied them to the door, stood and watched them forth, down the bank and into the path that ran to the glen. Looking back, the youths saw them there—Elspeth and Gilian and their aunt Jenny. Then the aspens came between and hid them and the white house and all.
"They're bonny lasses!" said Ian.
"Aye. They're so."
"But, oh, man! you should see Miss Delafield of Tower Place in Surrey!"
"Is she so bonny?"
"She's more than bonny. She's beautiful and high-born and an heiress. When I'm a colonel of dragoons—"
"Are you going to be a colonel of dragoons?"
"Something like that. You talk of thinking that you were this and that in the past. Well, I was a fighting-man!"
"We're all fighting-men. It's only what we fight and how."
"Well, say that I had been a chief, and they lifted me on their shields and called me king, the very next day I should have made her queen!"
"You think like a ballad. And, oh, man, you talk mickle of the lasses!"
Ian looked at him with long, narrow, dark-gold eyes. "They're found in ballads," he said.
Alexander just paused in his stride. "Humph! that's true! … "
They entered the glen. The stream began to brawl; on either hand the hills closed in, towering high. Some of the trees were bare, but to most yet clung the red-brown or the gold-brown dress. The pines showed hard, green, and dead in the shadow; in the sunlight, fine, green-gold, and alive. The fallen leaves, moved by foot or by breeze, made a light, dry, talking sound. The white birch stems clustered and leaned; patches of bright-green moss ran between the drifts of leaves. The sides of the hills came close together, grew fearfully steep. Crags appeared, and fern-crowded fissures and roots of trees like knots of frozen serpents. The glen narrowed and deepened; the water sang with a loud, rough voice.
Alexander loved this place. He had known it in childhood, often straying this way with the laird, or with Sandy the shepherd, or Davie from the house. When he was older he began to come alone. Soon he came often alone, learned every stick and stone and contour, effect of light and streak of gloom. As idle or as purposeful as the wind, he knew the glen from top to bottom. He knew the voice of the stream and the straining clutch of the roots over the broken crag. He had lain on all the beds of leaf and moss, and talked with every creeping or flying or running thing. Sometimes he read a book here, sometimes he pictured the world, or built fantastic stages, and among fantastic others acted himself a fantastic part. Sometimes with a blind turning within he looked for himself. He had his own thoughts of God here, of God and the Kirk and the devil. Often, too, he neither read, dreamed, nor thought. He might lie an hour, still, passive, receptive. The trees and the clouds, crag life, bird life, and flower life, life of water, earth, and air, came inside. He was so used to his own silence in the glen that when he walked through it with others he kept it still. Slightly taciturn everywhere, he was actively so here. The path